Donald Sutherland
Donald McNicol Sutherland
OC is a prolific Scottish-Canadian
actor with a film career spanning over 40 years.
Encyclopedia
Donald McNicol Sutherland OC is a prolific Scottish-Canadian
actor with a film career spanning over 40 years.
Biography
Early life
Sutherland was born in
Saint John,
New Brunswick to Dorothy McNichol and Frederick Sutherland, who was in charge of the local
bus, gas and
electricity company; his maternal grandfather was a Protestant minister. Sutherland, of
Scottish descent, grew up in Bridgewater,
Nova Scotia. He got his first part time job aged 14 as a news correspondent for local radio station CKBW Radio in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. He then studied at
Victoria College,
University of Toronto eventually graduating with a double major in engineering and drama. He had, at one point, been a member of
"UC Follies" comedy troupe in Toronto. He changed his mind about becoming an engineer and subsequently left Canada for
England to study at the
London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Acting career
In the early 1960s, he began to get small parts in
British film and TV, in the mid 1960s getting notable roles in horror
films with
Christopher Lee such as
Castle of the Living Dead , and
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is a 1965 British [i] horror film from Amicus Productions [i] ...
. His first great successes came with the three war films
The Dirty Dozen is a 1967 [i] war film [i] directed by Robert Aldrich [i] from the nove...
in 1967 with
Lee Marvin and
Charles Bronson, in 1970 as the lead
Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in
Robert Altman's
M*A*S*H and as tank commander
Sgt. Oddball in
Kelly's Heroes is an offbeat 1970 [i] war film [i] about a group of enterprising World War II [i] Am ...
with
Clint Eastwood and
Telly Savalas. Sutherland had an intimate relationship , with actress
Jane Fonda, during the filming of the
Academy award-winning detective thriller
Klute .
Sutherland and Fonda went on to co-produce and star together in the anti-Vietnam war film
F.T.A. consisting of a series of sketches performed outside army bases in the
Pacific Rim and interviews with the American troops who were then on active service. Sutherland found himself in demand as a leading man throughout the 1970s in films such as the
Venice based psychological horror
Don't Look Now , the war film
The Eagle Has Landed is a book by Jack Higgins [i] first published in 1975 [i]. ...
, and as the ever optimistic health inspector in the
sci-fi horror
Invasion of the Body Snatchers alongside
Brooke Adams and
Jeff Goldblum. He also had a small role as the pot-smoking Professor Dave Jennings in
National Lampoon's Animal House in 1978.
He also made acclaimed performances in the 1976
Bernardo Bertolucci Italian fascism epic
1900 and for his role as the torn father in the
Academy award winning family drama
Ordinary People is a 1980 [i] American [i] motion picture [i] drama whic ...
alongside
Mary Tyler Moore and
Timothy Hutton.
He played the part of fellow countryman,
Canadian Norman Bethune, a physician, humanitarian and hero in
China with whom he identified, in two separate
biographical films in 1977 and 1990. Through the 1980s and 1990s his films were perhaps less noteworthy than those in the 1970s, exceptions being the
South African apartheid drama
A Dry White Season alongside
Marlon Brando and
Susan Sarandon, the fire fighter thriller
Backdraft alongside
Kurt Russell and
De Niro, and as the snobbish
NYC art dealer in
Six Degrees of Separation with
Stockard Channing and
Will Smith.
In the
Oliver Stone film, JFK, Sutherland played a mysterious Washington intelligence officer who spoke of links to the military-industrial complex in relation to Kennedy's assassination.
Recently he has been noted for his role as
the Reverend Monroe in the civil war drama
Cold Mountain , in the re-make of
The Italian Job is a British [i] comedy [i] caper [i] film [i], written b ...
, and in
Pride and Prejudice belongs to the romantic-comedy genre and is the most famous of Jane Austen [i]'s ...
starring alongside
Keira Knightley.
In July 2006, he picked up an
Emmy nomination for his performance in the TV movie "Human Trafficking".
Sutherland's distinctive voice has been used in many radio and television commercials, including those for
Volvo automobiles.
Personal life
He was married to actresses Lois Hardwick and
Shirley Douglas , the daughter of Canadian democratic socialist statesman
Tommy Douglas. They had twins born in 1966, a daughter Rachel and a son
Kiefer Sutherland .
He met his current wife, the French-Canadian actress Francine Racette , on the set of the Canadian pioneer drama
Alien Thunder . They have three sons :
- Roeg Sutherland
- Rossif
- Angus Redford Sutherland
Donald Sutherland was made an Officer of the
Order of Canada in 1978.
Trivia
- Sutherland played Kate Bush's father in the video for her song Cloudbusting.
- Either dislikes the smell of cigarette smoke or it may be a medical irritant. In an article promoting Pride & Prejudice, Rosamund Pike claims she "was privileged to be able to chat to Donald Sutherland on set - because she is not a smoker. She says, 'I don't smoke so I was able to come within a hundred metres of him unlike other people on the set - no one can smoke within a hundred metres of him'" .
- When offered the choice of a flat $40,000 fee or a percentage of the gross on National Lampoon's Animal House is a 1978 [i] comedy film [i] in which a misfit group o ...
, he chose the former option - which he conceded has cost him millions.
Filmography
External links
